Jingyi

The guardian of Ayumu and Akari, and their martial arts master. Born a tiger hybrid, and bastard descendant of a lost lineage of martial artists.

     She grew up as a child servant in an aristocratic family's home, treated as not much more than mere object. Her impure blood, result of one of the family's young son's affair with a tiger hybrid mistress, led to her being given nothing but a small room, and plenty of chores to do around the extensive family property. However, while forbidden, she did also have access to plenty of secret scrolls as well, teaching from basic to advanced martial arts techniques. Training away, hidden from the eyes of her elders, she managed to grow strong, although she had no way to show it without being punished.
     During Jingyi's late teenage years, a fire was set in the house at night; the peasants which worked in the family's lands grew sick of the increasingly abysmal conditions; and Jingyi, the only one awake, as she was cleaning dishes, managed to escape.

     Running far away, she was fortunate enough to come across a village of hybrids and humans, though, she came to learn, it was often the target of various hunting raids. Outraged, she decided to devote her life to the mentoring of the locals in the martial arts, sharing the family's now lost secret techniques, strenghtening their defenses. As these techniques focused on self defense and were inspired by the behaviours of nature's animals, the mentoring program was a wild success. The village, with a deep connection to local fauna, quickly became familiar with the martial art, resulting in a grand ordeal of civilians ready for any combat neccessary.
     However, as the village's resistance escalated, so did the raider's violence. During one raid, the village was on the brink of collapse, and so, Jingyi took two newborns with her. During her escape, she managed to cross the border to a less populated and industrialized country, where her strenght would be worth more for manual labor. After locating an abandoned dojo. Jingyi decided to reform it and turn it into a home, for the two newborns to both live and train in.

     During the two children's early years, Jingyi already needed someone to keep watch on the two babies, however, soon enough yet another would come under her care; she found a young, injured white hawk. She nursed him back to health, and, realizing no parents would come back for a one-legged chick which fell out of its nest, she decided to keep him in the dojo, naming him Tadeo. As he spent most of his time living together with toddler Ayumu and Akari, forming a friendly, almost fraternal bond, Akira decided to train him into becoming a sort of caretaker. Even if he was nowhere near as capable as a regular adult mortal, he was still able to let Akira go out into town to work jobs and buy groceries, while resting easy that Tadeo would keep an watchful eye on the two younglings.

 she/they